Ithaca Made Rifles? Why Yes, Yes it Did!

Certainly better and best known for its shotguns, including the famous Model 37, Ithaca once dabbled in rifle building, as well.

This was Ithaca’s first endeavor into rifle making. Eventually the firm produced a single-shot, a lever-action, and a fine bolt-action.

“The Ithaca Gun Company of Ithica, N.Y., is best remembered for the double barreled shotguns they once manufactured. If your father or grandfather was a waterfowl or upland bird hunter he might have used one. If he also enjoyed the sport of trap shooting he might have started the game with an Ithaca single-barrel trap gun. … Up until about 1958 Ithaca never bothered with a rifle, but in that year they introduced the Model X5 Lightning, a semi-automoatic 22 rimfire … .Then they introduced the Model 49 single shot 22, and after that the Model 72 lever action repeater. But the Ithaca rifle that interested me most was the LSA-55, a centerfire bolt action.” Frank de Haas, from the Gun Digest/Krause Publications book “Bolt Action Rifles 4th Edition,” by Frank de Haas and Wayne van Zwoll

About Jennifer L.S. Pearsall

Jennifer L.S. Pearsall joined Gun Digest in summer 2011 as a books editor. She began her career selling guns in a retail gun shop and handgun range in Northern Virginia in the early 1990s. Recruited by the NRA to join its editorial staff in 1999, she then went on to succeed as a freelance writer and photographer. She's been a competitive shooter in many disciplines, including sporting clays, IPSC, and metallic blackpowder cartridge silhouette, and she has been an avid hunter for many years.